My mission is to educate people about what is in our food. Food ingredient labels can be confusing, and hard to figure out what all those ingredients are. No judgements, no suggestions on what to eat, just cold hard facts about what is in our food, what it does. I plan to compile ingredients lists from national food. And find definitions of the ingredients that are hard to say, let alone, figure out what it is exactly.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Yellow 5

A yellowdyeusedinfood,drugs,cosmetics,andotherproducts:requiredbyFDAregulationstobeidentifiedonfoodlabelsbecauseofpossibleallergicreactionsinsensitiveindividuals.

Yellow 5 is banned in Austria and Norway, and other European countries. Tartrazine can cause a variety of allergic reactions that vary from mild itching and skin rashes to serious allergy-like hypersensitivity. People who are allergic to aspirin are more likely to experience adverse reactions to yellow 5. This can include asthma attacks and bronchoconstriction or difficulty breathing. Yellow 5 seems to cause hyperactivity in some children. Yellow 5 has been linked to a number of health problems, including blurred vision, migraines, fatigue and anxiety. Some dyes can be contaminated by chemical carcinogens as they go through the manufacturing process. Yellow 5 is one of these colorings.

All the synthetic dyes are allowed to contain harmful contaminants like lead,
mercury, arsenic, and benzidine (a carcinogen). Lead usually targets the
oxygen-carrying protein in red blood cells first, eventually attacking your
nervous system. The primary effects of mercury on infants and children is to
damage neurological development. Arsenic can cause several kinds of cancer, as
well as headaches and confusion. While it is true that colorings don't have
large amounts of any of these contaminants, there is no good reason to consume
them.